Also, Washing the Dishes Before You Eat Off Them Again is Worse Than the Gulag
Ann Althouse has some Deep Thoughts regarding an innocuous article about how Barack Obama was something of a slob when he first started dating his now wife, and oh boy does unintentional comedy ensue. I had assumed that my favorite line would be this:
That’s a very casual revelation that she would have slept overnight with him if only he’d had a nicer looking place. There’s zero regard for the folks in this country (and world) who think you shouldn’t have sex until you’re married.
And, also, there’s no regard for the people in this country who believe that Barack Obama should have asked Michelle Robinson for her father’s permission, because she was her father’s property until she gets married. For shame! This could be a genuinely new angle in the belated-conversion-to-five-alarm-wingnuttery genre: “I used to be a Democrat, but then I found out that Barack Obama does not show sufficient respect for the reactionary gender norms of 50s sitcoms.”
But, never, ever, ever, think that Althouse has written the most risible thing you’ll see her write, as she further ponders a woman who might not wish to spend the night in a messy bachelor pad:
Plus, from a political standpoint, it sounds fascist, and it prompts us to think about her efforts to tell us what we’re allowed to eat. Does she care about our health, or is it — as the right-wingers like to say — all about control?
I shall now turn things over to Thersites, who it must be said reflects dismaying insolence towards a respected member of the legal academy:
Hitler made Poland clean up the old pizza boxes before he fucked it. This is exactly why Michelle von Obama wants your kid to eat celery and do some jumping jacks.
I think a woman who suggests that her date not wear a tracksuit to a wedding ranks somewhere between Ceausescu and Pol Pot.
Oh man it gets much worse than what you’ve quoted here. Also, I’m guessing that “I had to get her a hotel room” is a “respectful of those who don’t believe in sex before marriage” way of saying “I had to get us a hotel room”.
i’m guessing i don’t want anyone who had ms. althouse as a law school instructor as my lawyer. either she’s drinking even cheaper boxed wine, or she’s just getting stupider as she gets older. either way, it’s an embarrassment to anyone associated with her.
The boxed wine can get a *whole* lot cheaper, and consumed in larger unintended quantities, if it’s consumed by butt-chugging.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
yeah, hey, thanks for that. i now will have to spend the day bleaching my brain.
The people who are capable of being embarrassed by their association with her, have been for a long time.
Those who aren’t already embarrassed by it will never be, no matter how stupid / drunk she gets.
I had a couple of friends who went to law school at the UW-Madison in the early nineties. She was an embarrassment back then–just not publicly.
since you mention it, my older brother got his MFA at UW-Madison, in the early 80′s (lovely campus and city, btw), was she there then? if so, i’ll have to ask him if he remembers her ever being mentioned, outside the law school.
madison has the all time best farmer’s market i have ever had the pleasure of going to, ever. i noshed my way all around the state capital building.
I don’t know as she’s getting stupider as she is more determined with each passing year to be known as the conservative Maureen Dowd or die trying, and those who associate with her (such as her commenter-turned-husband) probably already think that she is.
It’s funny how she’s all about 1950s gender norms, but doesn”t seem to believe those norms apply to her. If she really believed in that shit, her ass would be in the kitchen making some man a sandwich, not writing shit and doing the law school thing.
And yet dumbass women like her probably call themselves feminists. Look in’ at you, Palin!
I don’t think that’s true, is it? Don’t people like Althouse, Palin, etc., go to great lengths to make clear that they’re _not_ feminists?
They do this because if that’s their approach, they can eat their cake and have it, too. Althouse can enjoy the status that comes with being a law professor (a career path that wouldn’t have been open to her prior to the feminist revolution), and at the same time disassociate herself from the “icky” feminists.
The lack of self-awareness, it is strong.
Palin, yes, but doesn’t Althouse self identify as a “real” feminist, unlike all those silly sex-crazed fake ones who insolently refuse to comply with her important feminist position that no woman under 40 should be within 500 feet of Bill Clinton at any time?
IIRC, Palin calls herself a feminist?
Even if they don’t identify as feminists, they still have benefitted from the feminist movement- the same movement they look down upon.
It’s more of the same “everything and anything for me, but not for thee” conservatives love so much.
Plain certainly identified herself as a feminist, while believing in things that limit choices for other women. Not sure where Althouse stands; she’s still an ass, though.
Sorry, “plain” should be Palin. I would blame autocorrect, but that makes fuck ups less fun. ;-)
Sarah, Palin and Tall
I hear Michelle wore a red dress on their first big date, showing zero regard for the folks in this country whose favorite color is blue. What a bitch.
This is all so deliciously goofy that I’m actually hoping some of AA’s flying monkeys pop in to defend it.
Bless you, Scott. My allergies are at Defcon 3 and woke me up, so what I needed badly was to laugh so hard that I got the hiccups.
Death to the Neighbors Who Burn Juniper (Even Though It’s Not F’ing Cold Tonight) Because A Fire Is So Romantic. Death by snot.
I can commiserate, having allergies also. The low temperature here currently is ~45-50 and some people in the neighborhood still insist on burning wood. Creeps. I couldn’t imagine stepping into their houses to be face with a roaring fire. You’d think there were some nostalgic puddlers among my neighbors.
faced, surely.
I once lived in Laramie, WY. Maybe it was because mountain states get some kind of air inversion thing that traps the atmosphere locally, but I remember on more than one occasion walking home from work at the university (just a couple blocks) through a thick smog of wood smoke.
I’m sure libertarians would want to murder me, but I don’t see how in this day and age burning wood is permitted in anything but a truly rural area. Should be banned, just like leaf burning often is.
Juniper? Good grief. It’s illegal where I live to burn poison ivy, which people only do outdoors. What nut burns juniper in their own home?
people that want to breathe gin?
No, cheapskates who want free heat at the expense of everyone else’s OTC allergy med requirements.
when he first started dating his now wife
I don’t see that detail stated in the NYP fluff (which talks about “during their entire 20-year partnership”, i.e. post-marriage). The “little bachelor apartment that Michelle refused to stay in” which Obama describes seems to be his accommodation when he became a US Senator.
Unlikely, I know, but could AA be projecting?
And if one bothers to track down the original in Vogue, it’s as you say: he was in the Senate, and they were married.
Well that just makes it worse. If they were already married, it was obviously Michelle’s job to clean up the mess.
So she imagines immorality on the part of the Obamas and attacks them on behalf of imaginary people.
So in his first sentence of the OP, Scott made the classic blunder of believing any statement of fact from AA.
The g-dropping transcription in the original story is odd.
Worse yet, the on-and-off g dropping.
Regardless of the wishes of moralists, having sex depends at least as much on the availability of private, appropriate spaces as on moral concerns. Very few peole want to have sex in the open air or in the view of other people.
The moral rules of patriarchy work surprisingly well in a pre-industrial society where almost no one has a private place to sleep in. If you are sleeping in the same room (or bed) with a number of other people, you can’t really engage in sexual relations without everyone else knowing. This means that having sex outside social control is possible only in the summer, when nights are warm. Thus, the patriarchal mores are relatively easy to follow, because they are dictated by the environment and self-control is challenged only seldom.
With the privacy that is afforded by modern lifestyle, it is much easier to find a private place that is suitable for having sex. Thus, patriarchal morality becomes incompatible with the rest of the culture.
Although I’d also like to note that it is well possible to “sleep overnight at another’s place” without having sex.
Sometime several years ago I read something that had a quote from someone in Russia, where there was a severe dearth of housing, and even married people would up living with their parents. It was something along the lines of: ” I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had sex in the snow.”
Who knows. It might even be kinky.
Cheers!
JzB
you clearly were never Governor of Illinois and married to Jeri Ryan
Say what you like about Illinois, and I will back most of that shit up, Jack Ryan was never the governor.
Well, neither was George Ryan. And, of course, Jack Ryan lost his chance at higher office once it was revealed that he actually chewed out the future Seven of Nine for not wanting to do it in public, when the only thing he should have done with her pre-sex (and every time) was to get on his knees and thank the deity of his choice for his wholly undeserved good luck.
For some, the joy of having a hot wife or girlfriend is not the enjoyment of her beauty, but other men’s envy. Evidently Jack Ryan imagining the envy of, ummm, ALMOST EVERY STRAIGHT MALE GEEK BETWEEN 13 AND 70, wasn’t enough: he had to see it in the flesh.
But Jesus, Obama sure knows how to pick opponents, eh?
Thankfully, AA didn’t find out about all of the goat and ox dishes the young couple had to eat for more than a year after Barack extracted a traditional Kenyan dowery from Michelle’s father, when he finally did ask for her hand in marriage.
Whew!
We Libetards dodged a bullet there.
Hopefully Trump never hears about that!
Do you understand that you are actually making a worse claim about Obama than Althouse? Eating the wife’s dowry (had such frivolous dowry been given) is the most irresponsible thing that a husband can do.
In common law, the dowry is the personal property of the wife, even if in the custody of the husband. In case of divorce or husband’s death, it returns to the wife, and makes it possible for her to survive economically. In case of the wife’s death, it is inherited by her children, and ensures their livelihood in case the father favours the children of the next wife.
If the wife gets a dowry, it should be invested, not used for living expenses. So, eating the cattle given as a dowry would be extreme irresponsibility. You might even believe that the wife’s family might sue you for it.
They lived in a small apartment.
Of course they had to break tradition, and had to eat them. Even if it was irresponsible!
The closets were too few and too tiny to house any more of them, if goats and oxen were left to do what goats and oxen were wont to do, and had babies!
So, until the dowery was exhausted, it was curried goat on weekdays, and oxtail stew on weekends, after Mosque!
Plus it demonstrates another flaunting of the 1950s norms. A decent couple starting out in a small apartment doesn’t eat the wife’s livestock. They rely on the husband’s stock, given to him by his father the governor.
Mea culpa!
I know about the personal being political, but this is ridiculous.
There’s zero regard for the folks in this country (and world) who think you shouldn’t have sex until you’re married.
Clearly, at all stages of dating, the Obamas should have been asking themselves “What will Dagney think?”
If AA was referring to me there, she was right.
For pithiness, this comment in Althouse’s post clearly wins:
“I used to be a Democrat, but then I found out that Barack Obama does not show sufficient respect for the reactionary gender norms of
50s sitcomsLeviticus.”really, there is no mention of a menstrual hut, for instance
… and now I’m outraged by Maude.
It’s amusing that those that try to get people to refrain from pre-marital sex are also convinced that such restraint is impossible if you spend the night together with someone.
“Well, dear, men have … needs, and they can’t always control themselves.”
I’m all in favor of restraint – I usually have to pay for that sort of thing.
“I’m all in favor of restraint – I usually have to pay for that sort of thing.”
more information than most of us needed to know!
It’s a sick world and I’m a happy man.
In fact, at the point in their relationship with the housekeeping which Althouse is criticizing, they almost certainly were refraining from pre-marital sex, since they were already married.
I wish Ann Althouse’s parents had simply not engaged in sex.
They didn’t.
She was hatched in a cuckoo’s nest.
FTW!
Trivia: cuckoo’s don’t actually have nests, but practice brood parasitism.
Applicability of this fact to Althouse is left as an exercise for the reader.
That was easy. Post a harder problem.
I think that was the idea, no? That Althouse was a changeling?
She is certainly a parasite.
My youthful resistance to my mother’s entreaties to clean my room was not borne out of laziness, but a desire to resist fascism.
No role was too small in the fight against national socialism!
The main reason I’m not a fascist is that I really am too lazy.
You gotta keep the boots shined, you gotta run around fighting with unionists in the streets, and all that marching marching marching all the time…it’s a big commitment!
Now, the conspiracy theorist extremists in DC – they’ve got the right idea. You write up your sign, you score a good park bench, and you chill. Bob’s your uncle.
Not to mention all those cold showers, nude volleyball games and, of course, the obligatory German grammar classes.
I never most of the grammar just the part about verbs at the end putting learned.
I feel my time in the blogosphere has come full circle – Althouse was one of my first regular reads (because Law Professor!) and now having been thoroughly convinced by Campos, if I ever needed more evidence that law school is (and has been for sometime), a scam, Altmouse!
Did Anne and the troll wait?
No, but they’re not in Vogue and the NY Post shoving it, as they say, down your throat.
I must have missed it when “regard” became a synonym for “utter capitulation.”
I don’t think they even waited until they met in person.
Ew.
Just….ew.
Ahem:
http://traxedo.ie/index.php/traxedo-gallery/
What say you now, Herr Lemieux?
Next time I have a really horrible idea, I’ll console myself with the knowledge that at least I didn’t have that idea.
The only thing that surprises me about that is they’re from the Republic, not Northern Ireland.
Ireland? Try Bensonhurst.
If you don’t think you should have sex before marriage then don’t have sex before marriage. That’s about all the regard I feel is required.
Now stop telling me how to live my life!
Second, there are a lot of folks who think that you shouldn’t have sex before marriage. Most of them have not applied that principle in their own life.
In fact, in the current Western culture, both in the US and in Europe, a person who has not had sex by 25 years of age, regardless of marriage status, most likely can get an F-series ICD10 code for his/her affliction.
Right, the slippery sense of “you” is the point.
Slippery sense, you say?
There were certainly a whole lot of people who didn’t want to have sex before marriage with me.
some of us did our part, even if unintentionally, to promote abstinence before marriage!
Inconceivable.
I do not think that word means what you think it does
I, on the other hand, had a bit of a problem with people who wanted to have sex with me after marriage… to someone else. (Not as sexy as it sounds.)
Second, there are a lot of folks who think that you shouldn’t have sex before marriage. Most of them have not applied that principle in their own life.
Exhibit A — the shotgun wedding
The ridiculous thing about Althouse’s comment is that, ostensibly, she is not one of those people. Or, at least, Althouse has never given any direct suggestion that she doesn’t think people should have sex before marriage.
If you are actually one of the ridiculous people who think that nobody should have sex before marriage, then I suppose you can criticize Obama for this story. Rod Dreher, or whoever, could say this without being any more ridiculous than usual.
But surely these people can fight their own fucking battles? The fact that Althouse is criticizing Obama for this when she herself makes no claim to actually believe that nobody should have sex until marriage makes the whole thing doubly ridiculous.
That is such an ordinary, relatable story. You have to be off your meds to find a problem with it.
My wife was grossed out by my apartment when we started dating! Hey, and how about those 7-11s?
Ann Althouse has zero regard for the folks in this country (and world) who think you shouldn’t be a blithering moron to have a prominent perch in the mainstream media.
With apologies for the nutpicking — although surely this is forgivable when nothing can be nuttier than the OP? — the very first comment:
Yes. Everyone.
“Stands in the wrong batter’s box”? Talk about fussy and anal.
Well, he is left-handed, no?
Perhaps, but that doesn’t force one into the wrong batter’s box. At least not in any game I’m familiar with.
I’m so confused. Where is the wrong batter’s box? Is it a penalty that gets you sent there?
I think it’s their confused, garbled homophobic way of saying that he plays for the home team.
If you’re going to imply that someone is gay, best not to do it right after a column complaining about his premarital sex with his now wife.
Jeez. So now WRT FLOTUS, we’re supposed to do a full Austin Powers?
“That’s no first lady, that’s a man, baby!”
I canna keep up.
Oh my, of all the great many slurs I’ve heard cast against Obama, I can honestly say that this is the very first time I’ve heard that he might bat for the other team. So yes, clearly, *”everybody”*…
Wasn’t the “Obama in secret gay and coke orgies” claim big business in 2008-9? I seem to remember the right wing crazies promoting some pathetic man who claimed to have been Barack’s closet love bunny or some such.
Kevin DuJan still tries to flog that one from time to time.
If only the pious, moss-grown busybodies who were never going to vote for Obama anyway had known this before the election.
I don’t have sex, why should anybody else?
T
Of course, if she’d read the article, she would have known that the Obamas were already married during the time this anecdote was about.
I don’t think you should get married without having sex first. Where’s your regard for me, pre-marital-sex-haters?
I’m not against pre-marital sex, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the ceremony……….
Can I get your phone number?
[...] we have Anne Althouse, a conservative blogger who’s shocked, shocked and appalled that Barack Obama [...]
This is all pretty funny when viewed against the backdrop of Ann’s dating history and her inability to find a husband except for the star-fucker she had to seduce out of her commentariat. I would imagine there was GOBS of pre-nuptial sex there, with many a winebox consumed.
Days too late for anyone but a bored admin to see, but here goes:
When I glanced at the first line of the article, I scanned ‘Derp Thoughts’. Only after that did I parse ‘Ann Althouse’. And thought, “Well, of course.”
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